It looks like Arizmendi got approval from the city to move ahead with their parklet plans on Valencia, and now they’ve started an Indiegogo campaign to help fund the project. In their words:

We, the worker-owners of Arizmendi Valencia care about providing delicious, affordable and unique baked goods to our neighborhood. As a diverse cooperative, we also value community dialogue among folks of varying backgrounds and experiences. In this spirit, we want to build a semi-circular parklet in front of our store to cultivate comfort and connection among our customers.

It also sounds like they’re planning on having the parklet host a rotating mural series, and that they’ve already received interest from neighbor and talented local artist Sirron Norris. As someone who enjoys both delicious baked goods and sunshine, I couldn’t be more excited about bringing these two things together.

RM – just to clarify, it is not actually private space, it will be a public parklet for the use of any and everyone, whether they patronize our bakery or not. also, delivery vehicles on valencia don’t use the curb, they park in the median when making deliveries. our parklet is specifically designed to be ada compliant, too!

yeah – its pretty nuts, and almost unbelievable that its that expensive. included in that price is fees we pay to the city, paying our designer and of course the contractor who will build the whole thing and is legit bonded – not sketchy and not paying their workers well. we are using reclaimed wood on the parklet, which is very expensive, but we really wanted to use reclaimed/local/sustainable materials.

I like Arizmendi. I love that it’s a collective and everyone is paid well. But should I donate money so that a business (however organized), can make more money by having more seating? That’s all this is: a request for donations so they can increase available seating. I’m not sure that’s the best use of charity.

Probably not the best use of charity, but definitely not the worst either. And it’s just as you said, a request. So the people that want to help fund it have an opportunity to, and the people that don’t can just ignore it. Everyone wins.

I know this is self-absorbed, but with so much of this “crowdfunding” stuff, I keep coming back to my failed business and my failed band, and how it never occurred to me to ask people to give me money to keep it going. If the end game was me succeeding, it seemed that it was my responsibility to make that happen. Arizmendi is a successful multi-outlet business. They can’t pay their own way? Your previous post answers this, as well, I’m just continuing to opine.

we are a successful business, this is true, but i have a feeling we don’t make as much money as you think we do. were selling scones and pizza, which have a very small markup, and our mission is to keep our goods affordable. each arizmendi is actually independently owned by the workers at that location. i can’t speak for the other bakeries, but i can tell you that we are still paying off many thousands of dollars in loans (and will be for several more years) that we took out in order to build out our store as it is now. rent is high in the mission, the cost of doing business is no joke here. anyway, just wanted to clarify that though we bake a lot of bread, we don’t really make a lot of dough!